I think the one that was the most surprising is the one about students only learning 10%, and 20%. What surprised me the most was that people were taking charts or figures and adding percentages to them. This concerns me because teachers or other researches could see that and think it is true. This could cause a lot of misinterpretation or misunderstanding. You could change their minds by doing your own research and using that to show them these strategies are not good. Also, you could even research other strategies that would be better and convince them that they work. For instance, my CT and another 4th grade teacher did tons of research to show the board that having a open seating layout without desks works better for student learning. I am not sure if I dismissed any of the articles and their research exactly. Also, I think each article is very interesting and sheds light on many issues that can happen in the classroom. I use to sleep in class with my eyes open. This saved me the trouble of actually learning any of the material and I was very bored. As teachers we must just do our best to keep these students engaged.
What I liked most was the two articles on the multi intelligence levels. I've seen this done multiple times and even my CT did it at the beginning of the year. I agree that we learn with all them or have each of them. We do not just learn one way. Students can learn multiple ways and showing and saying that each student contains a part of each multi intelligence level is true.
Gardner's ideas do have merit, it's just that educators have taken them and turned them into a lesson planning tool (which Gardner himself disagrees with). Planning for different styles is fine, classifying students is where the problem occurs.
ReplyDeleteYes, the research being misrepresented is troubling. I've had my work cited, and in reading it, I've said, "That's not what I really said." That reduces our confidence in using research to inform our decisions.